“I STOPPED BELIEVING IN SANTA CLAUS WHEN I WAS SIX. MOTHER TOOK ME TO SEE HIM IN A DEPARTMENT STORE AND HE ASKED FOR MY AUTOGRAPH.” ––Shirley Temple

Click We are one week into having Mr. Darcy’s Promise officially published and I have still not received my personal copy in the mail! My friend and daughter have, but I have not. Apparently Amazon.com is quicker with my friend’s copy than Createspace. In fact, yesterday I got a chance to see the official printed copy and autograph it for him! Yes, HIM! My first devoted fan was a man! He insists he was the first one to buy it too! So I took a moment to pause before I started writing out my first note to a reader.

I truly believe that we should all take a moment and pause at these momentous occasions. Whether it be a birthday party, a graduation, a marriage, or for me, it was signing the first copy of my book, we need to pause and feel the moment we are in.

This week has been packed full of moments. For those who have published before, it is so exciting to see your sales rank go down and your sales numbers go up. To hit the top 100 historical romance books was a moment that resulted in a little squealing. The moment my name as an author hit the best seller list in historical romance was a moment. To get your first review was a moment. To have a traditional publisher make contact with you because they looked at your website and saw that you have two more books to publish and request that you submit your entire manuscripts to them to review was indeed a moment. To review your first promotional guest blog on a reviewer’s website and start the advertisement of your book was a moment. To have someone ask how your book was selling and being able to tell them that it was ranked # 30 in historical romance was indeed a moment. Any of these moments are moving, and each of them unexpected. They were hoped for, perhaps even dreamed about but not expected. I cannot even describe how it feels to have these moments all in one week! So now I have officially autographed my first book. Signed. I have sealed the envelope for the bookclub copy for the August bookclub. Sealed. I have received my daughter’s copy of my book in the mail. Delivered. I have officially signed, sealed, and delivered Mr. Darcy’s Promise for the entire world to read! What a moment! Some of you may wonder how I self-published my book. I first wrote the book. Then I took a 6 hour class at the University of Utah (literally two 3 hour Monday night classes) taught by a hysterical author, Stacy Damalski, author of Confessions of a Band Geek Mom, (definitely worth the read if you want to laugh so hard you pee your pants!) where she walked us through the steps to publish your book. I did exactly as she taught me with very few variations. I asked a few questions along the way, but for the most part, it was painless process. It was very rewarding to see all the work I put into it go live on Amazon.com. I’m not going to sugar coat it for you; self-publishing my book was like working another full time job. But it was full of these moments where we must stop and pause. It was so very fulfilling and rewarding to know that my team, a team I hand-picked, created such a wonderful product to sell. And as of now, I have an average rating of 4.4 stars! So those of you who have read my book (thank you by the way!), take that “moment” and write a review! But of all these moments in the last year since I wrote the book, autographing my first copy and giving it to a dear friend was indeed the best of them all. And although I’ll never be Jane Austen herself, I do hope she would have been pleased with my variation on Pride and Prejudice. I wonder if she felt these same moments. It is so sad to know she never saw how truly successful her books have become and how she has changed lives. I wonder what she thought of when she autographed her first book for a friend or neighbor. I did read once that the Prince Regent kept a copy of all her novels in each of his residences and she knew him personally. I assume she signed them for him. How I would love to have looked over her shoulder in that moment. For me, that moment would have been priceless! Jeanna Ellsworth Hey lady Publications

Thanks for the shout-out, Jeanna. I'm so glad I could help in some small way. But in the end it was YOU who did all the work. You deserve every bit of success you have achieved with your book. I'm so proud that you went the distance. Onward and upward! (And it's never too early to start thinking about your next book!)

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About the Author

Jeanna is a mother of three daughters, all whom are well versed in Pride and Prejudice; they are her best friends and the inspiration for her writing. She also proudly states she is the eighth of thirteen children. When she isn’t blogging, gardening, cooking, or raising chickens—or more realistically, writing—she is thoroughly ignoring her house for a few hours at a time in order to read yet another romance novel. Somewhere between being a mom, sister, writer, and cook, she squeezes in three 12-hour shifts each week as a Registered Nurse in a Neurological ICU. She finds great joy in her writing and claims she has never been happier.

Jeanna fell in love again with Jane Austen when she was introduced to the incredible world of Jane Austen inspired fiction. She can never adequately thank the fellow authors who mentored her and encouraged her to write her first novel. Through writing, Jeanna has gained something that no one can take away from her: hope for her own Mr. Darcy. More than anything, she hopes to prepare her three best friends to look for their own Mr. Darcy and to settle for nothing less. Jeanna’s works include: Mr. Darcy’s Promise, Pride and Persistence, To Refine Like Silver, Hope For Mr. Darcy, and Hope For Fitzwilliam. She is eagerly working on her first attempt at an original Regency romance novel: Inspired By Grace. For more information on these books, please visit her website, www.HeyLadyPublications.com